Altered game pieces from the book Mixed Mania

Those of you that know me, know about my love of using food adjectives in relation to crafts, so when I saw the tag line, "Recipes for Delicious Mixed-Media Creations" I knew I was going to love:

Mixed Mania: Recipes for Delicious Mixed Media Creations

Mixed-media artists Debbi Crane and Cheryl Prater share their enthusiasm, humor, materials, techniques, and projects to make mixed-media art accessible and appealing to the masses.

Featuring a wide range of mixed media projects, this outrageously fun craft primer takes a decidedly unstuffy approach to an immense range of art methods. Projects—including art quilts, painting, collage, bookbinding, assemblage, doll making, decoupage, and image transfers—are divided into three main sections: Artistic Appetizers, Creative Main Courses, and Sweet Treats and Special Occasions, with each addressing a different level of time invested and difficulty. Whimsically laid out like recipes, each project includes detailed ingredients (materials), instructions (what to mix and add), and tasting tips (how it should look).

I really like my "art" to have a function and this idea in the bottom left corner of this page is just great! It is customizing checkers with photos.

Well I don't play checkers but I do play poker and poker uses little round chips! Perfect.

(click on the image to enlarge)

Circle punches and old magazines made quick and fun work of customizing and altering these plain poker chips. It was fun to do both sides with images that either went together or were in contrast.
The side benefit to playing with these chips is that my guests started to want to keep them! Made betting even more of a challenge.
And if you thought I was kidding, this is what the table looked like while the decorating of the poker chips was underway.